1. Technical Field
This invention relates generally to protective sleeves for providing protection to elongate members contained therein, and more particularly to wrappable protective textile sleeves and to their method of construction.
2. Related Art
It is known to dispose protective sleeves about wire harnesses to protect the wire harnesses against at least one of contamination, abrasion, thermal affects, vibration and noise. Of the known sleeves, some are provided as dual layer sleeves having a circumferentially continuous inner layer (also referred to as “closed”), which is first slipped along a longitudinally axis of the wire harness over the elongate wire harness, and then an outer layer is wrapped circumferentially about the inner layer to provide dual layer protection. Although these sleeve can provide the desired protection to the contained wire harness, they are labor intensive to assemble about the wire harness, and thus, costly.
In addition to the aforementioned dual layer sleeve, it is also known to wrap a single layer about a wire harness, and then upon wrapping the sleeve about the wire harness, wrapping strips of tape about a plurality of locations along the length of the sleeve to maintain the sleeve in its wrapped configuration. Although these sleeves can provide suitable protection, they are costly due to the need to wrap the plurality of tape strips about the sleeve, and further, can ultimately result in contamination finding its way into the sleeve between the adjacent strips of tape.
Further, it is known to wrap a plurality of nonwoven layers laminated to one another about a wire harness, wherein the nonwoven layers are the same size as one another and are laminated in mirrored relation, thereby having flush edges about their entire peripheries. Although these sleeves can provide the protection desired, the plurality of nonwoven layers provide the sleeve with an increased wall thickness, particularly across the overlapped edges that have four layers abutting one another. As such, these sleeves require an increased amount of space, which can be problematic when real-estate is at a premium.